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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has started rolling out AI agents, which he says will eventually become virtual co-workers of humans. He also confirmed that the AI agents will soon perform many of the tasks that software engineers with a few years of experience currently handle. This bold vision was outlined in a recent blog post where Altman discussed the rapid progress in artificial intelligence and its potential to transform industries.
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OpenAI Sam Altman rolling AI agents to do jobs of software engineers
Altman gave the example of a software engineering agent that could accomplish tasks typically assigned to a software engineer at a top company. However, he clarified that while these AI agents could perform tasks over a couple of days, they wouldn’t come up with groundbreaking ideas and would require human supervision.
In the long term, Altman imagines a world where AI agents are deployed across various fields of knowledge work. “Now imagine 1,000 of them or 1 million of them,” he said, highlighting the scale at which these agents could operate. He compared AI’s impact on the economy to the transistor, which revolutionised industries but is now so embedded in daily life that it often goes unnoticed.
Altman’s comments come at a time when artificial general intelligence (AGI) is nearing reality. He believes AGI could handle complex problems at a human level across multiple fields, driving economic growth and enabling people to achieve more in their personal and professional lives. He further stated that in the next decade, every individual could accomplish more than the most impactful people today.
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Altman also expressed concerns about the balance of power between capital and labour, suggesting that early intervention might be needed to prevent inequalities. He floated the idea of giving people access to more AI resources, though he acknowledged it could sound unconventional.
Meta recently confirmed plans to replace mid-level engineers with AI
Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg just recently announced that AI at Meta and other tech companies will effectively replace mid-level engineers who currently write code this year. This would likely change how tech companies approach software development.
“We will get to a point where all the code in our apps and the AI it generates will also be written by AI engineers instead of people engineers,” he said. For context, a report recently claimed that mid-level software engineers at Meta currently earn salaries in the mid-six figures — a cost AI could significantly reduce.
Google is already using AI to generate codes
Just a few months back, Google CEO Sundar Pichai also announced that over 25 per cent of all new code at Google is now generated by AI, with human engineers stepping in for final reviews.
While all the big tech companies are assuring that this won’t impact humans, only time will tell whether human jobs will be reduced because of AI. The companies are already firing thousands of employees in the name of cost-saving or performance issues. If AI successfully manages to take the place of humans, the companies won’t likely take a lot of time to replace them with virtual AI models. But, of course, this might only affect the people who do mid-level engineering jobs. All these AI developments suggest that it might be time for humans to upskill themselves to remain employed at big tech companies.